Could Microsoft also be working on Oculus Rift rival for Xbox One?

Microsoft is rumoured to be working on its own Oculus Rift rivalling headset for Xbox One.

While Sony is hottly tipped to unveil its own augmented reality headset for the PS4 during the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco from tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal claims that Microsoft has been developing similar technology for some time.

It filed a patent in August 2013 for a head-mounted 3D display and is said to have been developing the technology concurrently with a project called Fortaleza - "fortress" in Portuguese.

The Fortaleza name has been in the public domain since June 2012, when a leaked "Xbox 720" document appeared online. Xbox SmartGlass appeared in the pdf file before it was announced, as was the improved Kinect for the Xbox One. There were also pictures and details of "Fortaleza Glasses", companion AR glasses to improve gaming in a 3D sense.

The WSJ sources claim that at least one technology worked on is based on true augmented reality - projecting computer generation images over real-world backgrounds, so Microsoft's take on the future of gaming could be radically different to Oculus VR and Sony's.